Courtesy of JNS. Photo credit: Triggernometry/YouTube
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears on the British podcast show “Triggernometry,” Aug. 20, 2025
(JNS) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s July 25 statement regarding the recognition of a Palestine state was “shameful,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a recent interview with Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster, co-hosts of the popular U.K. podcast “Triggernometry.”
Netanyahu posted the Aug. 20 interview in its entirety to his social media account on Thursday.
Asked by Kisin whether recognition of a Palestine state would “encourage Hamas to continue their resistance,” Netanyahu said, “Of course, it does.”
Speaking of the terrorist group, the Israeli prime minister said, “They commit the greatest savagery against Jews since the Holocaust, and the prime minister of Britain says, ‘We’ll reward you with a de facto state,’… which is committed openly to repeating the October 7 massacre over and over and over again.”
Western leaders like to repeat that Israel has a right to defend itself, but “they recognize Israel’s right to defend itself as long as Israel doesn’t exercise that right,” Netanyahu said.
Western nations were applying a dangerous double standard to Israel by suggesting concessions to terrorists — something they would never accept for themselves if faced with a similar level of mass killing and hostage-taking, he said.
The capitulation of leaders of the U.K., France and others is a product of weak leadership caving in to distorted media, social media manipulation and radical extremist minorities, the Israeli leader said.
Those extremist protesters oppose not just Israel but also Western democracies, Netanyahu stressed. Many of Israel’s enemies are also America’s enemies — Iran-backed forces that have killed Americans and attacked U.S. interests — so support for Israel aligns with defending the West, he said.
Describing as “shameful” the way Western leaders in Britain, France, Canada and New Zealand, “buckle under,” Netanyahu added that 80 years after the Holocaust, European leaders want to “give a prize for those who would destroy the one and only Jewish state.”
Podcast co-host Foster asked Netanyahu about the loss of support for Israel among Gen Z (ages 13-28), and as they will become the future decision-makers, whether that poses a serious long-term risk to Israel’s support.
Netanyahu responded that anti-Israel sentiment among young people was not something spontaneous, but part of an organized, well-funded campaign aimed at eroding support for the Jewish state. He said because it was organized, it can also be countered strategically.
However, Netanyahu acknowledged that Israel is losing the public relations war. “This is a big challenge. I don’t want to dismiss it. But, look, we Jews have been fighting and losing the propaganda war for about 2,500 years. What’s different now is that we’re winning the ground war,” he said, noting the sooner Israel wins that, “the faster the propaganda war will dissipate.”
He dismissed as a “fraud” the genocide and starvation accusations. He likened the starving children slander to the blood libel during the Middle Ages claiming Jews killed Christian children.
“If we wanted to commit genocide, we would have done it in one afternoon,” he said, noting that Israel has the “capacity” to do so, but maintained one of the lowest civilian-to-combatant casualty ratios in urban warfare.
He said Israel had taken unprecedented steps to protect civilians, issuing millions of warnings to residents in areas where the IDF plans to conduct combat operations, while Hamas forces people to stay, shooting those who try to leave.
